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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Impunity and Profits

Josh Rushing travels to the city dubbed the murder capital of the world.

Fault LinesAljazeera

Once known as a booming industrial city and a model of economic progress in Mexico, the border city of Juarez has become infamous as the murder capital of the world. More than 8,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to carry out his offensive against the drug cartels.

The official story is that the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are fighting for the city and the access it provides to the multi-billion dollar US drug market only a few hundred metres away.

On this episode of Fault Lines, Josh Rushing travels to Ciudad Juarez, and asks how human life there came to be worth so much less than the drugs being trafficked through.

11 comments:

'Once known as a booming industrial city and a model of economic progress in Mexico, the border city of Juarez has become infamous as the murder capital of the world.'

Once known as 'a model of economic progress in Mexico"? What a crock of shit, 'Josh'! Juarez was ALWAYS known CORRECTLY before as a world sweatshop center where the worker had no rights and got paid poop for long miserable shifts. The town has always been shantytownsville. At best, one step up from casas de carton.

In fact, the whole Mexican side of the Border was known as an area where gargantuan international corporations could work people (more women than men) like they were mere slaves. Let's be honest about the origins of this gangsterism in Juarez. PLEASE.

What gets me about the moderation of BB, is that sometimes i can write real detailed comments that take up multiple issues and not be insulting personally to anybody, yet what I took the time to write seems to just get totally lost in cyberspace and never reappears online. But then all sorts of, shall we just say boobs???, will write oodles of squat like Anonymous 6:44 pm just did that has absolutely nothing to say about anything that I can see, and its All no Problem! ...and it's online onto BB to lower the entire quality of the site and the level of debate for anybody reading here. BIZARRO World...

So why allow pure insults by Anonymouses that say nothing better than 'You're full of shit' to people, and then disallow other much more thoughtful comments for no apparent reason? Now, I hope i don't just get told America Love it or Leave it, BB Love it or Leave it in reply to the opinion just expressed....

Blame America for Mexicos problems and try to change America so that Mexico will be a better place, after all the drug market is in America and that is the only reason why Mexico is corrupt. If Americas demand for drugs was a thing of the past, and cheap labor were not outsourced south of the border, Mexico would be a paradise, government corruption and cartels would be a thing of the past, the middle class would flourish and poor people would not seek crime as a means to an end. Why America, Why do you do this to Mexico? Its all your fault

I think your problem with some of your posts not making the cut is the simple fact a great number of your comments are off topic and have no significant revelance to the article, in which your suppose to comment on. I have read dozens of your comments and more often then not..they all have the same reoccurring theme!

1. The U.S. is responsible for the majority of the world's problems.2. All American politicians are crooked and are guilty of "war crimes"3. Anglos are the root of all evil.4. Anybody with a difference of opinion from yours is a Right Wing extremist.5. Almost everything that makes the news involves an elaborate U.S. Gov't conspiracy.

So, I wouldn't really worry if one or two of your posts gets lost..out the hundreds you send..all one has to do is read some of your old posts because they all say the same thing!

Wow Buggs, you dare post AlJazzeera's reports. You will make Fox' echo chamber Layla sick, you naughty boy. You will end up in Gitmo!Anyway, thanks for posting it. FaultLine is very good stuff (You all can't watch it on cable/sat but can watch it with a Roku box; Internet is still free is this country!)

To come back to The Dining Room Table comments above, even if he is unfair to Josh Rushing, he is right about Juarez, it has always been a lawless sweat shop. And obviously NAFTA has been the last blow to Mexican's social sustainability.

But so was Shanghai and now China is becoming the world's powerhouse! What's wrong with Mexico? Anything goes and there is no accountability.

Anonymous 9:37 am, this is the third time now I have wrote in response to your post. The other two times were not published., so what I see, is that Right Wing motivated personal flames are allowed by BB, but its hit or miss with the replies to them, with many replies just not getting published.

It's up to BB... Does it want to be known primarily as just a tea bagger cop lovers site or a site that allows FREE FLOW discussion of the 'drug war' by people with varying pov?

"Anonymous 9:37 am, this is the third time now I have wrote in response to your post. The other two times were not published., so what I see, is that Right Wing motivated personal flames are allowed by BB, but its hit or miss with the replies to them, with many replies just not getting published. It's up to BB... Does it want to be known primarily as just a tea bagger cop lovers site or a site that allows FREE FLOW discussion of the 'drug war' by people with varying pov?"

Saludos Ardent...

Well Ardent the third times the charm, you got published. the reason we declined to publish those 2 previous posts is that BB is not the forum for you to debate libertarian theory with other readers. Our focus is much more narrow and you should understand that by now.

Our site allows the FREE FLOW of responsible discussion of the DRUG WAR.

As for right wing personal flames and your ability to reply, please Sir lets not act the victim. Your posts are, in many instances, meant to belittle and provoke readers whose viewpoints differ from yours and we the admins are left to waste our time referreeing the ensuing combat. So let me put forth this condition. When your posts demean others whom you feel are not your intellectual equal, we will publish their rebuttal once and it will end there, agreed?

We will folllow the same rule with unprovoked attacks on yourself.

Just so that you know, we moderate many more obnoxious posts that lend absolutely no constructive element to the debate and are aimed at you than those of yours that we moderate. And you know what? You are the only reader who seems to complain.

Are we a tea-bag cop lover site? Maybe you haven't read recent posts advocating the legalization of certain drugs or those that reflect the Mexican Government's anger over our gun possession laws, and those that express the futility of the drug war.

By the very nature of our site we will often have a law enforcement angle to our posts, there is just no way around that.

'Just so that you know, we moderate many more obnoxious posts that lend absolutely no constructive element to the debate and are aimed at you than those of yours that we moderate. And you know what? You are the only reader who seems to complain.' ...Gerardo

I knew that already, Gerardo, and have appreciated quite a bit that the whole blast of personal insults directed my way was not just allowed to freely blast out.

I never felt that I am the only person effected by the filtering of the flames, so to speak. Others also have their replies not published or have to self moderate and tame their passions some.

The problem though is that when posts are pulled periodically that it often time also interrupts the discussion, too, and not just stops the particular personalized mud slinging. It gets very frustrating replying to a personal attack and taking 15-20 minutes to write it out nice and gently, and then just not even get one's reply in for one's efforts.

Anyway, thanks for the reply to what was going on, Gerardo. I will try to control my own nastiness (and at times YES, it does get out of control at times).

'By the very nature of our site we will often have a law enforcement angle to our posts, there is just no way around that.'

Understood, I will stop sniping about that. Though I am not a great fan of cops and soldiers as a whole, I do want to just be insanely blasting away at them every single second of every single day. I myself on my job, often times am directed to do some pretty horrible stuff or I will personally get the shaft if I don't follow the orders. Soldiers and cops face conditions perhaps that are no different from that, though 'health care' seems still to me, a much better spot to rest oneself in earning a living, than providing armed security mainly to the better off, rather than to those mainly straggling along in life. Hey! In US 'health care' it's very much the same way...

'So let me put forth this condition. When your posts demean others whom you feel are not your intellectual equal, we will publish their rebuttal once and it will end there, agreed?'